BNP Membership Data Loss: Further Implications
Some further quick thoughts on the loss of the BNP Membership List.
Accuracy of the Published List
Many people are assuming it is accurate, and working on that basis to plan various initiatives. There are some questions those people need to be sure about - or at least ready to take account of.
- What about the people on there who are not members?
- What about the people added maliciously by whoever leaked it to get revenge, if any?
- What about the people added maliciously who are just personal enemies of the leakers, if any?
i.e., What about “False Positives”.
The BNP have already lifted their usual “neither confirm nor deny” policy for people who are on the list who claim not to be members, but will they or the individuals be believed?
Implications for the Database State
The BNP has strong encryption systems in place, as noted months ago by the Spy Blog. This membership list leaked due to human failure (betrayal - we are told).
Is that not another nail in the coffin of allegedly secure national databases by demonstrating a different failure mode for a database that *is* “secure”? The only answer is to keep as many of them as possible small to minimise the scale of the statistically inevitable failures, and hence increase the resilience of the system.
A Prototype for Attitudes to the Sexual Offenders Register?
Is this a good analog for what will happen when names from the Sex Offenders Register are parcelled out on demand as proposed in future - a widely reviled group published on a potentially unreliable database?
[tags]bnp, bnp membership list, leak, political blog, spy blog[/tags]
Categories: All WW, Comment, Media, News - Current Affairs, Political Blogging, Politics
Yes — also there will be *very* many people who could be confused with those on the list, due to having the same name and living in the same town for example. I understand there’s one example of a university system administrator on the list with the same name and very similar email address to an academic at a different university in the same town.
I’d just like to make it clear that I am not the 1 vicar on the list. But you wouldn’t believe the cloud of suspicion - as I walked around in my dog collar this morning I was pelted with eggs, roundly abused, and then set upon by a mob of Liberals. Good job I had my obligatory clergy copy of the Guardian on me.
David Keen´s last blog post..It’s Not Me
>I’d just like to make it clear that I am not the 1 vicar on the list.
Heh.
[...] detail, although I recommend the posts and comments at Pickled Politics, Liberal Conspiracy and these two at the Wardman Wire. The second one deals with legal implications for blogs; look, listen and take [...]
The car fire-bombed in Yorkshire didn’t belong to a BNP member but was in the same street as someone listed. I knew a woman who had her home shot-up by the INLA because a policeman parked his car outside when visiting his Mother who lived next door to her. I think a lot of people who have nothing to do with politics will get caught-up in it if a cycle of tit-for-tat violence starts. Instead of scouring the list for people they employ maybe the Police should be doing something to stop that!